Spectators watch a fireworks display created by Chinese artist Cai Guoqiang at Yotsukura Beach in Japan’s Fukushima Prefecture on Monday. Photo: VCG

The fireworks show titled The Day the Cherry Blossoms in Full Bloom was meant to console the victims of the 2011 Fukushima earthquake and tsunami. Photo: VCG

Cai poses for a photo Tuesday at his exhibition in the National Art Center in Tokyo. The exhibition, Ramble in the Cosmos ― From Primeval Fireball Onward, opened on Thursday and will run through Aug. 21. Photo: VCG

A visitor takes a photo of Cai’s 2020 painting Frolicking on Ice in the Galaxy in the National Art Center on Thursday. Photo: Zhao Xiaoyu/Xinhua

Encounter with the Unknown, the kinetic light installation Cai created in 2021 and displayed in Shanghai’s Museum of Art Pudong last year, is included in his Tokyo exhibition. Photo: IC Photo

Children look at Cai’s Murmuration (Landscape) installation during a media preview for the Melbourne Winter Masterpieces exhibition Terracotta Warriors: Guardians of Immortality at the National Gallery of Victoria in Australia, May 2019. The piece features a flock of 10,000 porcelain starlings. Photo: Scott Barbour/VCG

Cai displayed his first virtual reality artwork, Sleeping in the Forbidden City, at an exhibition in Beijing in February 2021. Photo: VCG

Cai sprinkles gunpowder onto a canvas to create a piece titled Drawing for Footprints of History, made for the Beijing Olympics in August 2008. Photo: IC Photo

Spectators watch Cai using gunpowder explosions to create a painting of West Lake on a piece of silk in Hangzhou, East China’s Zhejiang province, in 2012. Photo: VCG

Residents watch a daylight fireworks show created by Cai in Shanghai in 2014. Photo: VCG

The 2014 explosive performance, named Elegy, was conducted from a barge on the Huangpu River. The event lasted about 10 minutes. Photo: VCG

Cai presents The World Odyssey, a fireworks show celebrating the 150th anniversary of Hennessy X.O Cognac in France in September 2020. Photo: VCG